Since I'm working on a mud of my own, a rather large one, I want to know what kind of room descriptions people like. I don't know too much about this myself, but I think I'll fill the rest of the space on this post with the things that I personally like to see in room descriptions, and if you feel like arguing anything I bring out, please do so.
First of all, aside from being written properly as in, proper grammer, spelling, and punctuation, they need to be decently long so as to provide enough information what they so to make them worth reading. If I'm traveling through a forest (I'm using this because I was looking through a list of EnvyMUD room descriptions a few minutes ago) I don't want to read descriptions that basically go like this,
"You are in a very dark forest. Ancient trees seem to watch you from high up above. The trail leads north and south."
I would rather have an open space with repeating descriptions in every room than be forced to read ugly little 2 line descriptions that have nothing to say but "There are trees here, the trail goes this way."
I'm fondly in favor of having a totally seperate means of showing the exits to a room, and not putting them in the description itself. To me, this is a waste of precious describing space! My idea room format would go something like this:
Room Name Goes Here [NESW] //shows a letter for each possible direction you can go.
The description of the room goes here, unless the player has descriptions turned off so as to show only the room name.
You can go North to \the [room name of room to the north], East to \the [Room to the east], south to \the [Room to the south], or west to \the [Room to the west].
I haven't figured out all how to get the grammar to show right for the exits description, but that will be an optional command just as showing the room descriptions will be. I'm sure I can figure out how to get the grammar working eventually. This is also the interface I intend to use in my mud, if no one noticed.
So, does anyone have any particular room describing tips they'd like to point out? Know of any room describing guides anywhere that I could go by? Anything to help me write some decent room descriptions for my world would be great!
And any other comments on this post would be good, too.
ID:154381
 Nov 8 2001, 5:47 pm
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Spuzzum wrote:
"You are forced to stoop as you enter this low chamber." In that case: "You walk into a small room as you hear someone yell OWW!! my head!! as the person trips and falls on you" --You're dead | |
Spuzzum wrote:
"You are forced to stoop as you enter this low chamber." We're assuming a game where everyone would have to stoop. ;) Z | |
You add an if check for that particular room to check the hight of the player entering. If it's small enough, they get a different description.
All depends how versatile your mud is... | |
Spuzzum wrote:
"You are forced to stoop as you enter this low chamber." Like magical boots in D&D, the chamber adjusts itself to the discomfort of anyone entering. :P | |
I'm not a big room description reader. That's one of my least favorite things to do in a game. But I like them to be displayed to me, just in case there's anything important. That means I prefer short descriptions (like the example you used to show what you *don't* like). But I think that's unusual in a MUDder.
A couple other things I can think of are to not "force" the character to feel an emotion ("The bleak pinnacle fills you with dread"), and in general avoid forcing them to feel/do anything at all. Sometimes, though, it is necessary. "You feel an odd tingle in your mind as you enter here" for a room with a strange magic, or "You are forced to stoop as you enter this low chamber."
Z